How to price a wine list in the UK (true cost, VAT included)

Written by Marco Azzari on 3 October 2026

If your wine prices were set from memory, inherited, or multiplied by a round number that felt fair, you do not know your margin. You have a guess with a pound sign. This page is the owner version: three lines, true cost, VAT included, before anyone redesigns the whole list.

What "true cost" means here

Start from what you pay the supplier for the bottle (the net you actually pay, after the discount you really get, duty already inside, not the list price you never paid).

Then put VAT in the costing the way it sits in the sale. In UK restaurant service, food and wine both go out at 20%. Alcohol is never zero-rated, and it was left out of the 2020 to 2022 hospitality cut as well. Cold takeaway food can be zero-rated. Do not build a wine price on the story that "wine is taxed more than food" in the room. That story is wrong for eating in, and your accountant will catch it. Full split: restaurant VAT.

If the price on the list was built years ago and never had 20% taken out of the thinking, the leak is silent. The guest still sees a number. The house keeps less than the owner believes.

Do three lines before you do thirty

Pick:

1. House wine (the pour when nobody chooses).
2. The glass that actually sells.
3. The bottle that actually sells.

For each one, write on a scrap of paper: supplier cost, true cost after VAT logic, current selling price, what is left. If you cannot do it for three lines, you will not do it for the list.

You are looking for two failure modes:

• Priced to empty the room. Famous label, fat multiplier, guest checks Vivino, bottle sits.
• Priced to empty the till. House pour still at 2019 prices, volume high, cash margin embarrassing.

Most independent lists have both, on different rows. Raising everything is how you get only the first problem. See phone-check markup.

Glasses are not bottles

A flat "×3 on the bottle, divide by four for the 175 ml" treats waste, tax, and mix as a vibe. By the glass, done honestly, is often the best cash margin in the house. Done lazily, it is where you give wine away and call it hospitality. Dedicated page: price wine by the glass. House as its own problem: price house wine.

Markup is a tool, not a method

A multiplier is a shortcut. Cash margin per glass and per bottle is the thing you can defend in a bad month. If you need the translation layer for a review meeting, use markup versus margin.

When the three lines are honest, you can decide whether the rest of the list is a weekend job or a conversation with someone who will do it on your actual bottles. The wiki stops at the method.